Although religion and society may treat suicide as an unnatural and absurd act, Amery claims that it is no less natural and absurd than many other forms of living and dying - and in many cases is more natural and reasonable than other alternatives an individual may face. "On Suicide" is neither a defense of suicide nor an invitation to assisted suicide, but an analysis of the state of mind of those who are suicidal and who actually do commit suicide. It is also a strident defense of the freedom of the individual and a plea for the recognition of the fact that each one of us belongs to oneself before belonging to another person, or an institution, nation, or religion and that one's right to choose to end one's life can have priority over social entanglements and biological destiny. As he did in "On Aging", Amery approaches the subject of suicide in a series of reflective literary essays, more philosophical than they are sociological or psychological. Suicide for him is not a problem or a sickness that society and human beings need to be cured of, but a distinctly human action, in fact a "privilege" of being human, that needs to be understood on its own terms.

"On Suicide" begins where academic and scientific studies of the subject leave off. "Instead of viewing voluntary death from the outside, from the world of the living and surviving," Amery writes, "I have tried to view it from the interior of those who call themselves suicidal or suicides."